


Jubilate

by freddieofhearts



Series: Continuous [6]
Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: Angst, BRIT Awards, Boarding School, Child Abandonment, Dysfunctional Family, Garden Lodge family, HIV/AIDS, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mortality, Period-Typical Homophobia, Poetry, Spring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-12-27 22:56:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21126626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freddieofhearts/pseuds/freddieofhearts
Summary: For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.Some interesting creatures live at Garden Lodge.Set in 1990.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LydianNode](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LydianNode/gifts).

*

_For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat. _

Jim strokes Freddie, and Freddie strokes Delilah. Aching, curled up on his side, and the warm living fur of her nestled in the place she’s chosen, against his knees. He’s wearing boxer shorts, a heavy sweatshirt, still can’t get warm—like everything else, too big for him, his bare knees stick out and Delilah has found them and gone right there. 

Why do people think cats are inconsiderate? It’s slander, Freddie thinks, cooing her name. They’re as loving as anybody—more so! Jim’s hand steadies him, halting with the fingers against the back of his neck. How much longer–? He tries not to ask selfish things like that. Jim has stayed longer than he has any right to wish for, longer than good sense or self preservation dictates. 

Whether it’s pity or God knows what else, he daren’t look, daren’t ask, no. That’s almost the worst thing, more alarming than just dying. 

“Stop worrying.”

Jim’s voice. Freddie wants to ask again, ask the same thing again, the eternal question, the fretting ache that bumps around inside. Do you love–? 

God, no. He swallows, he physically swallows it, like mucus. If he didn’t keep a tight rein he’d drive Jim mad, drive him away. 

“I’m just thinking how soft she is,” he says. “Most cats—their fur coarsens a little, you know? As they get older. She’s almost kitten-soft, she still is, actually–”

He almost says: Perhaps it’s something magical, she’ll never age. 

He keeps those words back. How can he tell her, tell the others? It would be bad enough with human children, dreadful, but at least you could prepare them, or try to. Whereas for his—only finding one day an atrocious absence, no Mummy, no explanation, only gone. 

Freddie knows his back has tensed up. You can’t hide that sort of thing, but then it’s not something he can confess to Jim, being a ghoul like this, not when Jim’s so patient and optimistic. No.

His fingers alight on a pointed, impossibly delicate ear, and Delilah makes a chirruping sound of pleasure. Girl cat, little signorina –

There’s a squawk from the doorway. Freddie doesn’t need to look to know who that is, but he looks anyway, just for the joy of seeing the dark brindles of Miko’s face, which always wears a look of indignation when that particular sound issues forth. 

“Are you hungry?” Freddie says seriously. “Has wicked Phoebe neglected to give you third dinner? My poor baby. Come and see Mummy and Jim.” 

Miko declines the invitation. 

“Something is wrong with that cat,” Jim says, as the squawk repeats. 

“You wouldn’t like it,” Freddie says, “If you didn’t get fed without reminding people…” 

“Freddie! Phoebe feeds them, and Joe feeds them, and I feed them—I’ve seen Mary give them a little something whenever she’s round—they’re the least underfed cats in London–”

“Are you saying they’re _fat_–”

“No, of course not,” Jim says hurriedly. “They have perfect figures. If anything we could feed Delilah up a bit.” 

Shameless pandering, he thinks. She’s not fat, but she hardly needs feeding up. He doesn’t want Freddie to get up, though: it takes enough pushing and coaxing and gentle bullying to get him recumbent in the first place, even when he looks like he’s about to pass out. If maintaining the position requires appeasement as well as an ongoing cuddle—well, Jim’s not too proud for that. 

Delilah stretches, bracing her back paws on Freddie’s thigh bone. 

“Ow. Sorry, darling–” 

He holds still for her, letting his fingers slide over her silky back. 

“Did she catch you with a claw?” 

Freddie would ignore that sort of thing if he was allowed to; it’s his blind spot. He has to be watched for little, cat-related injuries which, despite their essential triviality, still require a good dollop of antiseptic. 

“Oh no, no, just an achy spot. She didn’t mean to. I’m being a fusspot.” 

He turns his head and smiles at Jim over his shoulder, just as the bed moves, rebounds—someone has joined them. 

“Miko,” Freddie says, his eyes bright. “Baby. Mi-Mi-Mi-Miko.” 

Jim feels the hard, tiny pressure of paws as the cat climbs over him—up onto his leg, his hip, then half on him and half on Freddie—they really shouldn’t be allowed to do that now, but Freddie won’t have them stopped. Gordon calls it quality of life; Jim and Phoebe, in private, call it ‘bloody stubborn’. 

“Ow,” Freddie says, as Miko’s small weight moves off Jim and onto him. “Jim—oh.” 

“Off,” Jim says, lifting the cat gently, feeling wriggle and fluff, and underneath that, frighteningly delicate feline ribs. 

“But Miko wants a mummy cuddle–”

“And I don’t want you to be hurt. To hurt any _more_.” 

He’s let his control slip, and the words come out sounding almost angry, although in truth he is only afraid. Freddie’s whispering an apology, sweet as sweet can be, and he knows this, he’s seen this; they can’t go twelve rounds every time, he can’t stand it. Freddie still thinks that Jim has used the word ‘stay’ without grasping its meaning, and that he doesn’t know what the hell the rest of this is going to be like—well, perhaps he doesn’t. It’s already ten times worse than he’d imagined. More than ten. 

At least Freddie doesn’t seem as convinced as he used to be that Jim’s only waiting for an opportune moment to thump him. 

“I love you,” he says, fast-forwarding to where this usually ends up. “I love you, and Delilah loves you, and Miko loves you…” 

He hasn’t put the cat out or anything, only off Freddie, and now its sweet dark face is looking at him from the foot of the bed: wide-eyed, still rather kittenish, and distinctly reproachful. 

“Sorry, Miko,” he says, knowing it will please Freddie to hear it. 

Freddie presses closer. His head is throbbing, and even in a room he knows to be well-heated, he feels quite cold and sick. It’s ridiculous, horrible even to have the thought in the privacy of his own mind, but he wants Mummy. Still, after all these years, when he ought to have learnt long ago that you don’t get what you wish for. If wishes were horses! 

I’m the Mummy, he repeats to himself. Here, in Garden Lodge, I am. 

He scratches gently through Delilah’s fur.

*

_For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him._

Freddie scooping her up in both hands. If any foolish, well-meaning visitor asks about breeds, he says, “Peerless, one of a kind. And I’d never show her, dear! She’d hate it, she’d be quite angry.” 

Thin wrists flexed, raising her to his chest, to his face—cats are light, but all the same it’s startling to see him pick them up. As he shrinks, they look more substantial, crowding him on the bed, pushing their soft bodies against his ankles when he stands. 

Jim does worry. There have been falls, not often, and never quite _because_ of a cat. You’d be a loony, though, not to see the danger. It’s not as if he’ll ever ring when he’s bored of a Phoebe-enforced rest, or if he wants to pee in the night. Heaven forbid, asking for help? 

Well, Freddie would probably say if Jim pushed it, there’s always a cat or two around, dear. I’m never alone, don’t fret. 

What Jim wants to say is along these lines:

The carpet is thick to the point of being a small joke in itself, and I know you did that on purpose, and I know why. 

You are little. 

I’ve heard you fall in this very room and it barely merits the name of ‘thud’, so of course I’m hot and bothered when I think about you passing out cold at four a.m. or—to pluck an example from thin air, Freddie—falling over Goliath. Or any of them. Or more than one of them when they’re chasing. 

The cats talk to _you_, not me. I don’t want to rely on them summoning me if you need me! 

It’s not what he imagined, when he first moved into his separate, sensible bedroom. He lies awake in the Pink Room far too much, not using it to sleep or even to rest. What is Freddie doing, this minute? Could he be thirsty? He never drinks enough. 

Perhaps lonely. Perhaps afraid. 

The visions flickering under his closed eyelids are sharply lit, more vivid than he wants. All the little things you can do when you are there, in the room, and they go undone when you are not… A sore place, an abrasion. 

He hears small firm paws racing along the passage, a galloping that denotes play, play, a seam of wildness in the house underneath the nursing, the precision, the tenderness, and the gaiety that’s still here, though it’s dimming now. 

Freddie murmuring to the cat pressing close against him on the sofa, treading his lap. Most of the words are too quiet to be heard; it’s private; that’s all right. Not everything’s for sharing. 

“Whiskery-Oscary.” 

Jim heard that. And the beautiful too-thin hand, scratching under the cat’s chin as Carol Vorderman does arithmetic charmingly on the television. There are numbers spilling across her whiteboard, coming as easy as the song that once poured from Freddie’s lips.

*

_For he keeps the Lord’s watch in the night against the adversary._

That uncanny way they have: knowing a rough night, no matter how quiet Freddie is. He doesn’t like to frighten them. 

Often the bedroom collects more and more as the cold hours tick by. They don’t _help_. That’s not why they’re there. And what, indeed, could they do? Even the best of cats, righteous and comely, lapped in the wisdom of the millennia of cats who came before, would be hard put to it if you asked her to hook up an intravenous drip…

Phoebe had made that joke, something to that effect. Perhaps he thought Freddie would smile. It must have been one night after Christmas, one of the nights spent lying back in somebody or other’s arms, cold always, and again they took shifts. Too weary then, to cry. 

Sometimes he wants them to tease, it’s more normal, it’s like before, and nobody wants to live in a damn mausoleum where you can’t crack a joke. No wonder we don’t get asked out any more! No wonder. 

Other times, not. 

Now Jim is watching the door as they slip in one by one, at menacingly polite intervals. He sits up against the back of the bed—his back is killing him in this position, but it’s not something you can really say, is it? 

Freddie between his legs, stilled now. Propped against his chest. The cannula in his nose might be making him look better, or it might not be. How is Jim meant to pick out the truth of that, amidst so much desire? His eyes are useless. 

Miko walks up and down at the foot of the bed, purring. It’s a soft Miko sound, not often heard, because Miko is the quietest, when happy. If Freddie’s awake, he must be glad to hear it—only too tired to say so, with the strain of the evening, the hot lights, the cameras, the public. 

Dressing him up, much earlier, Jim felt horribly weepy inside. It was stupid and he didn’t submit to it, but like an undertow it tugged and tugged, a sick, deadly sorrow in need of hiding. 

Thermal vest. Thermal leggings, and a thing not to be mentioned. The suit that looks like he’s drowning in it, but no one can say so. 

All the makeup, and his eyes looking out while Phoebe put it on for him, wary, finding Jim’s face. Will I? How will I? Freddie rarely dares talk about being frightened, but his face betrays him, and the eyes in particular. 

Jim never says, I don’t want you to go to the studio, I don’t want you to stay out. Come home earlier. No, it’s too long, and it’s only a party, another one, please, let’s just – 

The sense of duty.

If you have once let somebody down, or twice, or thrice. Or more than that. 

And he knows now that Freddie believes it, can’t let it go, this idea that beneath everything, before it all, despite—he’s a disappointment. Oh no, no, poppet. No, don’t be silly, love. No one could ever think…

Words in the bed’s shadow, on other nights, missing their mark. Discounted: only the indulgence of a lover. Anyone else but Jim—he is certain Freddie believes this—would see it, would acknowledge that, oh yes, he’s had his ups, his moments in the sun, but for his family they have been more than sufficiently shadowed by all the things that cannot be forgotten, will never be consigned to the past. Let alone forgiven!

A party for Queen, for the others, he can’t let them down, can’t bow out. Think of the hurt –

Jim carried him to bed, quite floppy by then, not even holding on. Bitter, to recall the first times when he swept Freddie up, and Freddie’s slim arms clung to him, hands dancing at his chest, his shoulders—a small, lithe thing, wanting to press closer, then closer still. 

Phoebe was behind him on the stairs, Delilah poised in his arms. Gracious as she always is, collected like this in the evening’s dimming, half-lit dregs. Someone will come. Someone will conduct a cat to that cat’s rightful bed, the largest bed, the finest. 

They undressed him together, for speed. She prowled, not at her ease yet, smelling perhaps the exhausted sweat, the colognes of others who’d brushed against him or embraced him. 

Now she seems to know that all is well. It’s more than Jim does. When he stirs, and that’s often, Jim can’t say if it’s thirst or needing a wee, or the dry discomfort of the cannula. Or pain, because they haven’t given him a lot tonight; no one wants him too doped when his breathing sounds like that. Or tummy ache: Roger reported in a whisper that he did eat, he tried, a little. 

Brave darling, not wanting to make anyone unhappy; reluctant to spurn a kindly meant thing. 

Jim slips his hand under the quilt, under the sheet. Hip bone. Sharp little hip—he strokes it, strokes up. Freddie’s belly does feel swollen, incongruous on his wasted frame, and Jim unfastens the pyjama fly with one hand. Nothing that could dig in, not now. The silky pyjamas still perfectly dry, thank goodness. And Goliath, oh –

Darker, in the dimmed room. The blackest of all. 

The colour of my true love’s hair. 

Noiseless paws, along the edge of the bed, nearer now, nuzzling Jim’s arm, the arm around Freddie, holding him, keeping him. 

Hold fast, Jim Hutton. As if like Tam Lin, he’s with the fairy folk, and you must pull him from his milk-white steed. 

There is no horse for you, dear. Only hold fast, and fear him not.

Goliath, eyes only just lit, waits out the night. Even in the glistening dawn he keeps some sort of vigil.

*


	2. Chapter 2

*

_For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation. _

Freddie demands fish sandwiches so that the cats can join them, when Mary comes to tea, a week or so later. He can get up quite well now, and outside all the windows there’s early spring sunshine, new grass, and the ebullient crocuses sneaking in. Everyone still seems worried, still fusses; but there is no need. 

“Delilah,” he coaxes, sliding from his sofa to the floor in one swift slink. Is she under there? There’s no sign, only his suspicions, the tickle of knowing that your darling, your little one, isn’t far away… 

And of course, he’s guessed right. A velvety nose pokes out, then another half-inch of cat muzzle—two flattened, perfect ears—and the rest of the cat follows, springing immediately into her usual shape and rubbing up against Freddie with trilling purrs. 

On the floor together, Jim thinks, they look awfully small. 

“She’s a little jealous,” Freddie laughs, glancing at Mary. “Look, she’s—” 

Delilah has raised an insistent paw and placed it on his knee. 

“Yes,” Freddie says. “Good girl. You know exactly who your mummy is, don’t you? Cleverest girl. Clever baba.” 

He’s dropped his voice almost to a whisper, because when praising Delilah he is always careful of the other cats’ feelings. Oscar is lying on his usual chair, and he looks asleep, but you never know, with these subtle animals—at times, they seem to hear things, and understand them too, even in the deepest slumber. 

Or at least, that’s what Freddie has told Jim, several times over. 

Jim watches him peel open a sandwich and display its contents to Delilah, who sniffs it for a good fifteen seconds before she deigns to hazard the first lick. 

“Freddie,” Mary says gently, “Have one yourself, come on.” 

“Oh, I’m really not hungry at all, dear,” he says, and his face is innocent, his hand on Delilah’s back. If they were alone, Jim would push him, insist on at least a bite or two. Hand-feed him, like he feeds Delilah. 

And now Miko prowls in, going to greet Mary first because she has a partiality for her. Mary picks her up and holds her for a minute on her lap, and the words she uses in her instinctive cooing are so like Freddie’s—“Mi-Mi-Mi-Miko”—that Jim feels strange, almost left out: even though he lives here, even though Freddie wears his ring. Ordinarily he isn’t jealous of her, not now, because how is there any room for doubt over his place in Freddie’s life, over Freddie’s need of him, and want for him? 

Their past, though. That can still provoke a twinge. The shared language of cats and relative poverty, when Freddie was just as shy but lacked the means to insulate himself… When he needed her desperately, when she was the one who held his hand, and fed the cats, and did the thousand other necessary things. 

Freddie leans against the base of the sofa, tipping back his head. He looks exhausted, stark, fine-drawn. The circles under his eyes are hard to look at. 

Jim gets up and lifts him carefully, lies him down on the sofa itself, among the cushions. 

“Sorry,” he says to Mary, because that’s exactly what Freddie would say if he could. “He’s just tired. It’s nothing.” 

Miko is playing with the abandoned sandwich now, the one Delilah didn’t think much of. It dropped from Freddie’s hand onto the floor, and Jim thinks, I should clean that up, look at that mess of crumbs. Not fair to leave it. 

Mary comes to kneel by the sofa. 

“Don’t worry, love,” she whispers. “It was a beautiful tea, it was perfect. Joe’s an old witch, isn’t he, trying to ruin our waistlines with those almond things.”

It’s patently absurd, Freddie hasn’t taken a bite, and yet Jim can see the kindness. 

This ordinary thing, and our old worries: you’re not really an exile. Darling, come back.

*

_For every family had one cat at least in the bag. _

Late spring, when the skies themselves seem to be shedding blossom. It isn’t true. Only an abundance of trees; only a flourishing, that moment in the year which betokens the imminence of the great ripening, and yet is still too shy, still veiled, still petalled. 

As yet there is no real fruit. 

The car smells of heat when they’re driven out to Feltham and back, no matter how long an airing it’s given beforehand, and Freddie curls up against him, head on his shoulder, refusing a seatbelt. All he really wants is Jim’s arm about him: the sort of safety that matters. 

Jim rather dislikes Thursday. When they’re in the house, with Freddie’s parents right there, he tries his best to fade into the background, and it isn’t that he minds that, he’s never been a show-off. 

It’s rather difficult to look after him there.

He knows that he’s mostly needed to help Freddie, in as unobtrusive a way as possible, when pain or nausea or anything else gruesomely dreadful overwhelms him, and can no longer be simply ignored. Nowhere in the downstairs part of the house is really good for lying down—the only comfortable sofa is in the lounge, and Freddie would never hear of that, it’s out of the question. He seems to prefer Kashmira’s old bedroom if he gets “Took bad, dear” to the extent that a lie-down cannot be avoided; he doesn’t want to go into the room that used to be his own. 

It isn’t that he likes needing help normally, goodness knows. But it’s ten times worse—a hundred times worse—here, with Mummy’s eyes on him, frightened, and his father disappointed, again, as he always has been. Over forty years of it, poor man. 

He tries to keep his face still, not to show anything, but you can’t always do that. And he always tries to eat something, at least a little, because that above all will worry Mummy, distress her, if he won’t have even a bite. It’s a nightmare on his stomach, and it means a miserable night ahead, but he can’t—he _can’t_—hurt her, when the means to avoid doing so are in reach. 

After all, he’s already going to die. Nothing to be done there. 

The last three visits he’s been sick every time: huddled in the bathroom with Jim, trying to be as quiet as possible. The water running on full. It’s almost comforting when Papa scolds him about that, though he feels genuine chagrin about the water rates business. He’d pay it if only they’d let him. He’d pay it gladly, twelve times over. A hundred times. 

It’s pretty awful afterwards, because he just wants to be held, and that’s exactly what can’t happen here. No matter how rotten he’s feeling, Jim can’t touch him, unless it’s to help him get upstairs or downstairs. 

Last week he threw up in the car going home too. That reminded him of leaving school, the journey home, the last time. One of the most awful and humiliating journeys of a surprisingly peripatetic life—thinking of it, his eyes stung babyishly. Not as if he had to clean it up, not now; not as if anyone would dare to be mean to him about it now. No matter how disgusting they think he’s being. Jim and Terry are nothing but kind. But they have to be, don't they?

*

_For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon. _

“When he was a little boy… He loved his singing! He would sing for us at the parties, oh like a bird, people asked for it after he went away, like a bird…”

Her eyes are bright. She is proud of him. Usually she doesn’t talk to Jim like this, but perhaps she’s seen through Freddie’s pretence? 

Jim could see he was proud of himself, accepting a biscuit from Mummy, though he’s shivery and much too pale. He’s fine, fine, only happy to be here, and not on some horrid tour! 

Now he’s run out of breath, and he looks worse. 

Jer Bulsara is watching him, and Jim can’t help wondering what she sees. Is it the dying man, or her little singing child? 

Freddie’s plaiting the fringe of the cushion next to him with shaky fingers, not looking at anyone. This is more than Jim has ever heard from him about Zanzibar, about the time before school; it’s a ragged-edged hole in the history, one that he’s had to accept will never be filled in. 

Singing at parties. Singing like a bird. 

He’s tried to ask about what happened before Queen happened. Lying in bed with Freddie warm and safe between his legs, as snuggled in as it’s possible for a small human person to be, fitting perfectly, soft dark head on Jim’s chest. It’s a good time for talking. The only time he’s heard things that, he is sure, Freddie wouldn’t tell him in ordinary life. Things about Munich. Particularly hard apologies, and confessions of self doubt that astonished him to begin with, although he’s grown quite used to them by now. 

“Did you have your first boyfriend at school?” he said once, stroking Freddie’s back. 

The skin under his hand, soft and slightly dry, twitched, and he soothed it, long strokes. He’s always gentle when Freddie’s naked. It doesn’t take a lot, he’s found, to make Freddie tearful, though he tries so hard to hide it. 

“No,” Freddie whispered into Jim’s chest. The word came on the out-breath, a little unsteady. 

“But you must have been such a pretty lad,” Jim said, “All shut up in a boys’ school! Like being in the Navy…”

It’s a gentle innuendo, nothing more. 

Freddie said, “More like prison, dear,” and laughed. 

Jim kissed the top of his head. That was the better-not-to-talk-about-it laugh, and he recognised it at once, but before he could shift the position of the cuddle—a silent acknowledgment—Freddie said, “Of course I had crushes, dear. But it wasn’t a very—modern place.” 

Now he blushes, with Mummy’s eyes on him, Jim’s eyes on him, and worst of all, Papa’s remembering gaze. It’s supposed to be a nice memory, a sweet thing, singing for them. Little Farrokh, with the bird-voice. 

It isn’t like that, after it’s taken away. Maybe it should have been a fond memory, but even thinking of it makes his mouth taste salty, as if he’s face-down on the dormitory bed again, burying tears in the pillow which by degrees turns into more salt than feathers. All that comes back to him brings with it that smack of salt, every time: no matter where, no matter what. 

Childhood ruins you, and that’s a fact. If you’re a certain kind of person. How could it fail to occur to him, that this, now, is the real collection of the debt, and everything else, all prior punishments, only the forerunners? 

Expulsion. Shame on your head. If he’s older. If you’re caught. If you insist you love him —

Oh God, oh God, his eyes have filled with tears, and in front of his father, he can’t—Jim is helping him up, speaking for him, obviously guessing at his clotted throat. They’re going to the toilet. He doesn’t even fucking need it, for once, so it’s an exhausting wasted journey, but Jim puts the loo seat down and sits on it, and takes Freddie on his knee. 

“We’ll break it,” Freddie chokes, his voice horrible and wet. 

“Don’t be silly. How do you think fat ladies go?” 

Freddie giggles reluctantly. He doesn’t want to think about school, not one bit, nor about Zanzibar. The warmth of Jim, who has always been a furnace, helps slightly. 

Freddie says, “Mummy—” His voice wobbles and he takes one hard swallow, trying to sound more like a man and less like a teenager who’s ruined his life. 

“Mummy won’t mind.” 

But she did; she minded him failing. The great favour of being allowed to sit his examinations, speaking to no one lest his contagion spread. Not that staying did him any good at all. He couldn’t concentrate, spent every paper trying not to sob. It shouldn’t have mattered, because he’d never see them again, but he still didn’t want to be even more humiliated, right at the end. 

In Mathematics, he got up half an hour before the end and walked out, went to the bogs and vomited, kneeling on the freezing tiled floor. It was pointless. His father would kill him anyway, kill him — 

He puts his wet face against Jim’s chest and sighs. No more of this. No matter what the sin, at least it’s ending.

*

_For every house is incomplete without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit. _

Freddie’s holding Goliath in his arms, belly up, like rocking a baby. The black scrap’s expression bears—in Jim’s private opinion—a decided resemblance to the pictures he’s seen of Freddie in the seventies, of Freddie in Japan. Freddie not yet rich, a wary, kittenish look on his face, an air of being prickly, proud, sensitive and frightened, but still braving his way, not in the end to be put off by all the newness around him. 

“What a _good_ little cat.” 

Freddie’s voice has turned into something impossibly soft, and Jim thinks, this is what he’d be, if he were a father. 

He’s known it all along, only it’s the first time he’s thought it, quite like that. 

The cat’s tummy fur is like black thistledown, and Freddie’s fingers are rubbing, tickling there, drawing out a delirious and long-winded purr. Goliath never makes that sound for anyone else. He never will.

The last blossom is coming down, and only this morning, Freddie quoted Housman and said, “Fifty more springs and he’s complaining! Greedy bastard.” 

Should he count in months now? Jim watches him, he can’t stop watching him. The pretence is that it’s to see if he needs something. Silly, as he can still ask—although he doesn’t like to, won’t if he can avoid it. He used to ask for more when he needed it less. 

On evenings like this one it’s a thirst that won’t go away, can’t be sated even by hours of looking. Not even by touching him, holding him skin to naked skin. Bathing him. Another night, and another day—and to think that anyone who had a right to you, my darling, would send you away over the far seas. Only to think of it. 

All those loveless days and nights, my little darling. My love, my last love, my little one. 

Lamplight on Freddie’s face. He lets Goliath down and rises carefully from the floor. 

“Jim, dear,” he says. “I am tired. Please can we go to bed now?”

*

**Author's Note:**

> All italicised quotations are from Christopher Smart’s incomparable _Jubilate Agno_.


End file.
